


Two unknown things

by blueberry



Category: The Chronicles of Chrestomanci - Diana Wynne Jones
Genre: F/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-15
Updated: 2015-08-15
Packaged: 2018-04-14 21:51:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4581390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueberry/pseuds/blueberry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marianne's magic lands her in some unexpected trouble ... and in a situation she and Cat might have expected, privately, after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two unknown things

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aeriel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aeriel/gifts).



Chrestomanci Castle was not in an uproar, but it was a close thing.

It was the librarians. Miss Rosalie was the head librarian on staff and was meant to be there, and her trainee librarians shadowed her so often that they were on the verge of being nicknamed 'Beck and Call' except that the rest of Castle staff thought it would be a little mean. But the others were strangers, unexpected, and crowded in. Some came from as close as nearby villagers but some came from other countries, and one from what would have been a nearby village - if it wasn't for the fact that it was in another world entirely.

All were under the firm impression that they were needed to deliver special books on magic, history, and magical history, and had made hasty arrangements with great emphasis on the urgency of their visits, so that much use had been made of the pentagram in the main hall to get them in by magic. Unfortunately none of them were anywhere near as clear with regards to who it was that required their presence and their books. The situation was a mystery with a slight edge of hysteria - soothed over by the housekeeping staff offering tea and snacks, and pointing out the way to the guest bathrooms - until one of the trainee librarians skidded into the main hall and sighed with relief at catching sight of all the books being toted about. He asked if they were there to see Marianne Pinhoe, and in slightly different ways, things clicked into place for everyone present.

Marianne had enchanted all of the librarians. Some had come well out of their way to bring her books that would be useful to her, while the ones in the castle itself had thought very little of giving her the help she asked for as it was a quite normal and very understandable request. That is, until this assistant got the creeping, insistent feeling that more ought to be due, and rushed out of the library to find it.

Chrestomanci had been blandly flummoxed by the surprise delegation for just over a half-hour, and felt it fair at this point to summon Marianne to counter the fact that she had summoned others - even if it wasn't on purpose. He did wince slightly on seeing how she looked round at the crowd with a much more plainly flummoxed expression than he'd chosen to have, and put a hand on her shoulder be way of encouragement as he explained the matter as an entirely accidental enchantment and offered compensation for any grievous in conveniences.

Among the ensuing responses, someone in the crowd said, "That's what comes of being related to a demigod."

With that mutter Marianne was weighed, judged and condemned. That was what it felt like to her, standing surrounded by adults peering down at her. Chrestomanci, Millie, and a quantity of witches, housekeeping staff, warlocks, the househob, lawmakers, curious garden dryads, and of course librarians. With her burning-red face turned to the floor, all she could think of was that it had to be one of the people who'd known her for years now who had spoken over her head in that tone, and she couldn't find a single word in response.

Gaffer Pinhoe - and probably Molly too, for that matter - had been growing stronger in his walk through the woods. He hadn't been by the castle or the village in well over a year, but everyone was sure of it because of what had been happening to Marianne and Joe. In the last year their power had been increasing by leaps and bounds that would have indicated they were busy with dreadfully illegal goings-on (which everyone who knew them knew to be unlikely), or, it was found out with some research, if they were the children of gods - in this particular case, grandchildren. Marianne got the most of it, Joe a lagging second as it didn't always mesh well with his type of magic, and the rest of the Pinhoe family almost none. Marianne also got the worst of it: the magic attached itself long enough to truly become hers and then broke away almost as easily, eagerly wild, meaning that pieces of herself were constantly off doing things she wanted and needed, but not at all in the way she would have done it. The worst thing was that since she would also not have been able to do it before, she was still scrambling to control it.

The librarians and their books - variously about relations between humans and gods, the lives of the children of gods (and the occasional angels, demons, and other species), and Marianne's special interest, information on the Fair Folk - were both useful and the last straw.

After apologising, explaining some more, and giving thanks to the librarians, who at least seemed largely mollified and eager to visit the Castle's famous, enormous library, she went to find Cat in his room, and was deeply gratified when he said "Finally!" just as she lifted her fist to knock and had the door swing open at the first rap of her knuckles. It felt like he meant it for her.

"I heard all the commotion, and what happened." Cat looked palely distressed that made Marianne wonder for the first time what she looked like herself. No wonder she'd been offered all those cups of tea and now he offered her his desk chair. "I didn't think you'd want to be even more surrounded, but I was almost ready to dive in there anyway."

"Can I lock the door? And put a 'Go-Away' on it? Oh, I'd better not, it's bad enough I'm doing all this magic in the Castle already." She felt red-hot inside with the unfairness of saying that she was _doing_ the magic rather than that it ran away with her and slammed the door like one of her young cousins having a tantrum.

Marianne thumped herself into the desk chair as Cat perched on the edge of his bed and watched her with an anxious restlessness he didn't show much. Focusing on a sizable dent in a brick near the window, high up, she did not cry and simultaneously told of the castle staff member's judgement.

"But Gaffer wasn't even any kind of god when I was born!" Marianne thought of a new, even more applicable point. "And I was simply born, anyway, regardless of what else there is to my family - there's no need to sound accusing about it! As if I'm trying to have my magic grow faster than I can match controlling it!"

"I wasn't the one accusing you," Cat reminded her, trying to be gentle about it. He was pretty alarmed at this point, though; Marianne's magic, which had always been a blaze, now leaped and flared like what it really wanted was to be a house fire. He very much wanted to avoid her getting so angry that she ended up angry at the wrong person entirely, like him. What if there _was_ a fire? What if she ended up fighting with him and then had to be miserable and alone with just the adults and their high-handedness to contend with?

"They shouldn't have been speaking to you like that, either. Probably they're scared and annoyed because they don't know what to do. But it isn't fair to cast blame on you!" And now he was getting needlessly angry.

Marianne looked sharply away from the spot she'd been staring at to look him over. She hadn't had a good experience lately with people picking up on her needs and wants. "You can still throw off my magic, can't you?"

"If I'm paying attention. And if I want to. But catch me not helping you, Marianne." He glanced at the scratch she'd stuck her gaze to a moment ago, as if it might have properties of dampening what felt like excessive emotion. That failing, he steered the subject in a different direction. "So it's not working to store your extra magic in objects anymore?"

"I don't have that many people I'm willing to trust with my magic, Joe's flying machine will end up under my control more than his own, and Chrestomanci's safe could burst at the seams for how long this might go on." Marianne wound her fingers together in her lap. "It's a temporary solution to store it like that. I want a better one, and since none of us have been able to track Gaffer and all the information about this kind of thing is so old it's mostly stories and guesswork, it will have to be tackled a new way. There's no time to sift through for the facts and the _good_ guesswork."

Cat smiled, a little surprise in the midst of all the tension that startled Marianne in just the right way to smile back. "So that's why you're not downstairs with your nose still in a book, studying away."

"Oh, shut up," she said fondly. "The sooner we fix this, the sooner we'll have time to study together again, instead of me getting extra lessons all the time. I've been thinking that we're looking at everything very broadly - but this about Gaffer and me and the Pinhoe family as much as it is about the history of families with both demi-gods and mortals in it.

"He probably doesn't trust most of the other Pinhoes the way he trusts me and Joe, because the rest of the family can't control us that easily anymore. And I'm the one who matches his dwimmer better, even if it's not really my kind of magic, so I get the most of it. So, you see, it's all very personal. And Gaffer's power has to do with this place - with where we came from and grew up and lived, as much as it is all the kinds of woods and worlds Gaffer visits now."

It was getting a little harder for Marianne to speak. Cat and most of the Castle inhabitants knew the story of the Pinhoes, and the horrible secret they'd turned Gaffer into, but speaking about it all was still difficult.

Cat broke in, trying not to watch her too awkwardly in his worry. He hated all this fuss, but with Marianne in this state he found himself participating in all the fuss entirely naturally. "Do you think it might be possible to trace where all the power comes from, in the land? And maybe ... we could direct it somewhere else. Give it to ... the Fair Folk, perhaps? Since they're connected to the land..."

"Oh, yes!" Marianne exclaimed. "If we can do that, it would be an excellent option. I suppose we'd have to talk to Chrestomanci about it first, and see who of them have leaders at the time we sort it out, and try and see who wouldn't misuse it... But that would be the fairest thing, I think!"

"There's no need to still feel bad about what your ancestors and everybody did to them, you know. You have-" and here Cat did an excellent impression of Chrestomanci "-a most excellently overdeveloped sense of responsibility. Would you teach the other children?"

Marianne laughed in a way she hadn't done in weeks. "Children," she said eventually, and rolled her eyes. "I do think he says that specially to annoy us."

"It takes the sting out of it that he does things to annoy everyone, young and old."

They giggled together, for a fairly ridiculous amount of time. Strangely, after weeks of confusion, disruption, and trying to keep ahead, everything now seemed easy and solvable.

"I might well have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility," Marianne admitted eventually, softly. "I suppose I can't shake the habit. But it still makes me happy to think I could help the Fair Folk after what my family did to them, along with the others."

"I'm happy to help them again too. And you." Cat found that easy to say now, too. "You know, Marianne," he said, with his heart speeding up just a touch in a way that was equally oddly comfortable, "I do think that if I can't tell _you_ things - practically anything, really - then there's simply no point to having much to say?"

She watched him another moment. "I might well know what you mean."

And then, practically, she held out a hand. "Well - can you follow any lifelines and powerlines coming off me with your dwimmer?"

It was definitely a practical matter. They were clear on this matter with each other and with anyone who asked - holding hands was the easiest way for Cat to divine where the shifting, flaring power found its way in and out of Marianne's grasp. Certainly they had to do it as much as possible, they replied to any questions, and occasionally to raised eyebrows and nudging elbows, as they walked hand in hand where they could throughout the castle.

And even when they eventually managed to tie together all the magic left shifting loose across the county, and to siphon the excess to where it needed to be and to those who deserved it, it was hardly _impractical_ to keep holding hands, studying together, and walk alone together for hours.


End file.
